


Thirty Days of Star Wars

by rudbeckia



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Grooming, trigger warning for Snoke Grooming Ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 10:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>30 hundred word drabbles, one for each day of April.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirty Days of Star Wars

**1 Truth in Doodles**

Luke was not smiling.  
"Empty your mind, Rey. Let everything go."

"It's not that easy, Master Luke!" Rey protested, an edge in her voice. "I can't just stop thinking."

"Maybe you need an exercise that will clear your mind, free it. Try this," Luke pushed a pen and paper towards Rey. Rey took them and frowned. Luke watched her for a minute. "Draw abstract shapes. Close your eyes, concentrate on lines and angles and curves... oh!"

Rey's eyes snapped open and she beamed at her page.  
"I had no Idea I could draw so well. Look, master, I drew Finn!"

 

**2 Master of the Useless**

"I am Master of the Knights of Ren. You will speak to me with respect, General."

Hux sneered at the mask inches from his face.  
"Your methods failed, Kylo Ren. Mine are sure to be effective."  
"Any more traitors in your ranks, General?"  
Hux felt the derision and scowled at Ren's back.

Phasma interrupted.  
"Sirs, a transmission from Supreme Leader Snoke awaits."  
Hux nodded and walked towards Phasma and stood in the doorway.  
"Coming, Ren?"

Hux knew there would be repercussions, but he said it to Phasma anyway as Ren pushed past them.  
"There he goes, Master of the Useless."

 

**3 Dream Trial**

"Kylo Ren!" The voice boomed, Ren cowered.  
"Master! Give me time! I need guidance!"  
"It is too late for you." Ren fell to his knees. Looking up, Snoke's twisted face sneered down.  
"Your treachery is apparent. You will die crushed by my power. I claim your life in Punishment."  
"No!" Ren felt weight on his chest, a tightness preventing him from filling his lungs.Unable to scream, he spent his final exhalation on a hoarse cry

Ren jerked upright, sweating and gasping for oxygen. A hand on his shoulder and soft words.  
"Same dream again?"  
Ren nodded.  
"Hux, he knows."

 

**4 Grand Me a Victory**

The Wookie's groan was steeped in emotion. Maz sighed, looking around the half-rebuilt bar.  
"I know," her hand found Chewbacca's waist, the next words muffled through fur when Chewie lifted the thousand year old into a prolonged hug. "You miss him terribly."

Maz raised her face to peer into Chewie's deep eyes.  
"Stay away from his creditors, hmm? No pulling off any arms because they were rude."  
Chewie thought for a moment, rolled his eyes and nodded.

"He would have died before us anyway." Maz shrugged, not intending cruelty, "Han was human. There is no grand victory over death."

 

**5 Lies by Commission**

"Ben, listen only to me."  
The insistent voice in his head sounded concerned. Ben threw himself on his bed and covered his face.  
"You are stronger than them. You were made for greatness."

Tears prickled Ben's eyelids. He shook his head.  
"I miss home."  
"They sent you away because they do not love you. But I do."  
Ben wiped his eyes on his rough sleeves.  
"You are special, unique. I will teach you to excise this emotion and you will feel peace."

"Peace?" Ben mouthed the word without speaking. "Promise?"  
"Yes! Do as I instruct and you will be happy."

 

**6 Life on Wheels**

"Really, Artoodeetoo, beebeeeight, behave. This is AAAH!"  
The shiny golden protocol droid did not swerve in time. BB8 careened around the console and evaded collision, R2D2 was as fast on straights but did not corner well. The three-wheeled droid crashed into C3P0's legs and sent him sprawling backwards.

"ARTOO!" C3P0's plaintive cry brought BB8 back and made R2D2 reverse. "This is so undignified! Beebeeeight, you are SUCH a bad influence. Artoo was much calmer before you arrived. Just wait until the Princess hears."

R2D2 and BB8 exchanged a sequence of rapid beeps. Life on wheels was fun.

 

**7 Happily Never After**

Leia hugged the girl, marvelling that fragility masked such strength. Young woman, she corrected.

"Take it," Leia pressed the garment into Rey's arms. "It'll be cold, wherever Luke is. Heat gives him nightmares. His guardians... Oh you don't need a history lesson. Wrap up and stay safe. Promise."

Rey laughed.

"Promise!"

Rey put the jacket on and promised, hugging the woman who so quickly slipped into the role of mother she'd never known.

Poe stood with Leia and watched the Falcon soar.  
"If anyone can find Luke, she can. Make you happy, maybe?"

Leia sighed.  
"There's no happy ever after."

 

**8 The Pluto Effect**

"What's that planet?"  
"That's no planet!"

Her voice, loud and high with shock at recognising the function of the still distant uncharted object, ordered all pilots to pull up and return to base before they were detected. She watched the streaks as her comrades leapt to lightspeed and safety.

Small enough to be missed, insignificant in the eyes of a lazy radar operator, perhaps a comet or stray asteroid just passing by, she made a slow pass of the sphere, recording for later holodisplay.

The general needed to know this monstrosity existed, and how to blast it into useless pieces.

 

**9 Let’s Have It All**

Hux leaned closer. Phasma, helmet off, pushed a hand through cropped blonde hair and fixed a piercing gaze on Kylo Ren. Ren was the only one to lean back.

"General, what you are contemplating is madness. Leader Snoke will destroy you. I will have no part in it. Tell me when you have regained your senses."  
Frowning, Ren shoved his chair back and walked out.

Hux waited for the door to close then looked to Phasma.  
"Are you also afraid to act decisively?"  
Phasma shook her head.  
"We do not need Kylo Ren. You and I. Let's have it all."

 

**10 Funny Thoughts**

Rey had an infectious giggle. When she laughed, Finn couldn't help joining in. It bemused Poe, he smiled a lot but rarely lifted his serious mood to laugh aloud.

"My buddies!" Poe grinned. "What's so funny?"

Finn groaned.  
"Rey told the worst joke ever," he rolled his eyes and laughed, "and she got the giggles before she even got to the punchline!"

"Oh? Gonna tell me too?" Poe mock punched Rey's shoulder and slung an arm around Finn.  
"Ugh, no, it's terrible!" Rey protested.  
Poe insisted.  
"Aw c'mon, buddy, please!"

Rey sighed.  
"Okay. Why did Kylo Ren cross the terminator?"

 

**11 Rainy Mornings**

Fat droplets plopped into puddles. Rey watched from the window, arms folded on the back of a chair.  
"I have never seen so much rain. It never rained on Jakku. I'd collect condensation early morning, when it was cold enough. But this..." She turned and grinned at the man beside her.  
"I want to go out. I want–"  
"You'll get soaked!" Finn protested, laughing. "It's just water. Nothing special."

Rey smiled at the rain. "Well I think it's pretty special."  
When she took Finn's hand, giggled and pulled him toward the door, he smiled and let her lead him outside.

 

**12 Tools of Trade**

"Swap?" Thanisson nodded, exchanging his fruit for Mitaka's pudding. The officers' mess offered better than synthsust, but potluck governed which treat you got.

Later, Mitaka knocked on a door and traded two glossy red fruits for three long stemmed, fragranced purple flowers. He labelled each in careful script and arranged their delivery.

Phasma arrived on the upper walkway.  
"Thanks for the flower, sweetheart. Those emotionally stunted tools fall for it?"  
Mitaka pointed. Below, Hux and Ren stared at each other and their matching flowers.  
Ren touched Hux's cheek.  
"You... love me?"  
Hux snarled.  
"Yes, but I'll kill them for this."

 

**13 The Girl in the Window**

She looked out although there was not much to see. The dim glow of instruments reflected back at her and she checked readouts: pressure, velocity, bearing, fuel. Weapons. Everything within normal parameters. She smiled and looked at the window, rather than out of it. Her own reflection looked back, white helmet above broad nose. Every mission she thought might be her last, she smiled at herself.

A voice crackled her radio.  
"Blue Three this is Blue Leader, Testor, you are cleared to go!"  
She grinned as she engaged hyperdrive. Starkiller base would not know what hit it when she fired.

 

**14 The Shadows of Yesteryear**

He often came here to meditate, on the clifftop with the wind roaring in his ears and the waves crashing and sucking below. Spray rarely blew this high yet he tasted brine on his lips as he contemplated a future shrouded by shadows of his past.

He sensed her before she set foot on his sanctuary. A disturbance in his grief that he could no longer ignore. He felt her approach, step by rocky step until he knew she stood behind, waiting, fearful and alert.

He turned, recognised the object in her hand, slowly shook his head.  
"No, it's yours."

 

**15 Moment of Weakness**

Ren shook his head, voice as carefully controlled as his demeanour.  
"It was a moment of weakness. Think nothing of it."

Hux and Phasma, standing, glanced at each other then down at Ren. Hux spoke sharply.  
"Show your face when you speak."

The hemet came off with a click and a hiss. Ren's face pleaded.  
"I stand with you against my former master. General," he looked up at Hux, "I would do anything not to lose..."

Hux felt his chest tighten. Phasma pulled him aside.  
"He might be our enemy, keep him as close as possible."  
Hux smiled.  
"I will."

 

**16 Shield of Sorrow**

They stopped, a gulf between.

He looked to her face, worn and lined and beautiful with experience that put wisdom in her calm eyes, and wondered how he looked now to her.

She watched him walk then falter to a halt too far away to touch. She thought him aged, careworn, as if the weight of events he could not have changed sagged his face like gravity.

Somehow they would cope, there was no choice. Leia held her arms out and her brother stumbled into her protective embrace.

She wore a shield of sorrow big enough to cover them both.

 

**17 Magic of the Swans**

Han stood on the narrow bridge, remembering the boy sent away so many years ago. The son he had lost. Leia still hoped.

He'd been an uncoordinated, awkward child with hair that wouldn't stay off his face, limbs made of knees and elbows. In his last months with Leia, she reported that Ben was secretive and silent, resentful, said she held him back.

The man facing Han was beautiful. He stood elegant and poised, nothing like his father, nothing like the boy. Except... Han sensed Ben's uncertainty under the mask of Kylo Ren.

Just for an instant, before he fell.

 

**18 The Murder Capitol**

"It needs a snappy name. We can't go to Leader Snoke and say 'I designed a big killy thing'." Hux pondered, a frown furrowing his brow and pouting his lips.

"What about the Death Star? Sir?" Mitaka suggested. "It uses a star and it causes death."  
"It's been done," Hux sighed. "Twice. Do you know no history?"  
"Third time lucky?"

Mitaka said that under his breath and slunk down in his chair, suddenly aware that Kylo Ren two seats away would not appreciate his sense of humour.

"It also kills stars," Ren rasped through his mask.  
Hux immediately brightened.  
"Starkiller!"

 

**19 I Remember**

Kylo Ren lay still as stormroopers carried him aboard. Physical pain was winning. He resented looking weak in front of troops, more so in front of Hux. But he was shattered by the fight and terrifying force rejecting Snoke's call for his death at her hands.

Rey chose light and Ren lived.

Hux frowned at words mumbled through drifting dreams. Suddenly lucid, Ren's eyes opened and he gripped Hux's sleeve.

"He made me kill my friends. I remember them all, and he made me his. She threw Snoke off to spare her enemy. How much stronger is she than me?"

 

**20 Claws of Glory**

She padded in silence, stalking patiently, waiting for the moment. Too often out of reach; too high for even her most daring dive, or she was too restricted by arms and soft meaningless words to get at her quarry.

Her green eyes fixed on it, there! Unguarded, unwatched, unprotected from pouncing paws and strong jaws with teeth designed to pierce and tear.

Head perfectly still and hips swaying her feet into position, she unconsciously computed distance and force, ready to make chase if it took sudden flight.

She attacked.

At last, Millicent held Hux's little hat in claws of glory.

 

**21 In the Negatives**

Phasma tapped her datapad while she thought. The screen showed two columns, a table drawn to help her weigh up whether to allow... certain behaviour. Or not.

In the positives, it kept them busy, out of her way while she got on with the business of leading her army. Hux was in a better mood these days too and Ren hadn't ripped into anything vital with his lightsaber in weeks.

In the negatives, watching Hux and Ren exchanging guilty, red faced smirks and muttered innuendo almost made her barf.

But on balance, Phasma decided turning a blind eye was best.

 

**22 Simple Lies**

"You know they don't care about you like I do."  
The gravel voice spoke comfort when Ben felt alone.

"If they loved you, your mother and father would not have sent you away."  
Sowing doubts in his head.  
"Don't you think you'd be better off without them all?"

Then a change in mood, "Why should anyone else see something in such as you? Only I can see your strengths."  
Snoke's sibilant sneer sealed the deal. Ben knew he was worthless without the disembodied voice to instruct him.

"Master?"  
Ben whispered, Snoke laughed.  
He told simple lies to a vulnerable boy.

 

**23 Time of Sorrows**

He opened the box that lived at the back of the cupboard and took out the meagre contents.

Together they looked at pictures, childish daubs of hands unused to fine control and eyes that loved all colours.

They smiled and laughed and pointed at the yellow sun in the corner and the blue, blue sky and the almost horizontal horizon broken by triangular green mountains and lollipop trees.

She would have been twenty, their baby girl, now.  
If she had stood a chance.

But in their time of sorrows they struggled to remember one thing.  
It was not Luke's fault.

 

 

**24 Neverending Test**

"Oh THERE you are, Come along, BB8, Master Luke and Rey have arrived. You are needed to help download Artoo's memory into the main computer."

A sequence of beeps and whistles reached Threepio's hearing module.  
"Oh really. Don't be so childish. Of course Artoo likes you. This way!"  
Threepio threw up his hands and waddled off. Head down, BB8 followed.

When he noticed the spherical droid, Artoo chirped excitedly and sped across the command room floor. BB8 emitted a few short whistles and gave enthusiastic chase.

Dealing with astromechs was, Threepio reflected, a neverending test of his protocol droid patience.

 

**25 In Truth**

In truth, Finn had never considered the possibility until Rey confronted him with evidence.

"You told me yourself, you heard screams when those planets were destroyed. That's why you came back. How is that possible? Poe explained already that sound can't have travelled across space."

Finn shrugged.  
"Coincidence. Imagination."

"And then," Rey continued, "you knew how to use my lightsaber. Until a moment earlier you'd never touched one."

"So could you!" countered Finn. Rey rolled her eyes.  
"That's my point! Finn, you're–"  
"–Force sensitive," a softer, older voice interrupted. "It's a mixed blessing."

Leia sighed.  
"We better get you trained."

 

**26 High Cost of Freedom**

Hux spoke firmly, Ren lurked.  
"Your government is pathetic. You have disorder in your streets. You do not deserve power."

The figure in the holodisplay wavered, eyes down, fingers pulling at threads on their ceremonial robes.  
"General, Master Ren, give me more time and I will–"

"–ENOUGH!"  
Hux bellowed. Even Ren looked at him with respect.  
"You will surrender your entire system and bow to the First Order. If you resist, your people will become war prisoners."  
Ren murmured, "General, we do not take prisoners."

The figure heard and nodded.  
"If this is the high cost of freedom, I agree."

 

**27 In the Land of the Living**

Hux shivered in the snow with fear as much as cold, while stormtroopers carefully loaded the unconscious man. Hux hopped back aboard and shouted the order to depart.

On The Finalizer, Hux examined Ren. Nobody else got near. A droid helped cut Ren's clothing from him and Hux examined Ren's injuries. The bowcaster wound was deep, ragged and possibly infected. He called the droid over.  
"Treat that first."

Later, Hux fell into fitful sleep. Ren approached consciousness cautiously. He tried to sit up and failed with a groan. Hux woke, smirking.  
"Still in the land of the living, I see?"

 

**28 Strange Assignment**

He shooed away the medidroid as soon as Ren was patched up and responsive. It was a strange assignment, Hux thought, watching over Ren's damaged body as healing progressed.

Hux sat, stared, speculated.

Bring him to me.  
Not "send" or "deliver", the subtle, personal nature of the request was clear.  
Kylo Ren was summoned to complete his training.  
Hux was summoned for something else.

"I will not do it."  
Ren's voice, rough from pain, broke Hux's thoughts. Hux looked up into deep eyes.  
"I will not kill you for him. If that girl can throw him off, so can I."

 

**29 Open Concept**

Poe wasn't used to this feeling swelling in his gut, threatening to burst whenever he encountered Finn.

The rushed retreat from D'Qar left little time for personal matters. Poe made do with smiles across public spaces, greetings of 'hey buddy!' and brief hugs.

Poe needed time to find out how Finn felt and figure out what to do. But in war, time is an uncertain commodity.

Finn sought Poe out on their third night after the move.  
"Don't know how you feel," Finn paused, "but I'm open to the concept of... us."  
Poe held Finn like he'd never let go.

 

**30 My End**

Hux crawled ahead. Phasma, devoid of useless armour close behind. They entered Snoke's lair in near silence, gasping in fetid, too-thin air.

"That way,"  
Phasma signed and pointed, conserving strength for the battle to come. Hux nodded, checked his weapons and followed. After seemingly miles of dank passages, they entered a vast hall. At one end Ren faced a scarred, twisted figure on a basalt throne.

Hux fired once. Snoke halted it, a harmless streak of light. Phasma stood frozen.

Snoke sneered.  
"This is not my end! Kylo Ren, kill them both."

Kylo twirled his lightsaber.  
Snoke was wrong.


End file.
